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AGAIN
Some of those benefits have been implemented, such as allowing adult children younger than 26 to be on their parents' insurance policies, closing the "doughnut hole" so seniors don't pay so much for prescriptions and allowing Medicare to cover preventive care without a co-pay. If you've recently started being covered by any of the above be concerned but don't worry too much.
John Boehner and House Republicans have enjoyed their assassination vacation, but they don’t have time to try out the titles of any other Sarah Vowell books, because they have to spend next week performing their most important legislative achievement of the next two years: pretending they can repeal Obamacare.
Pretending they can repeal Obamacare.
This is what Gabrielle Giffords would want, after all. She put her life on the line every day, especially when meeting her violent constituents, because she believed she was doing important work, un-like these pointless exercises. If only that dead nine-year-old could have lived to see this, eh? If only. She would be so proud of her country and game playing republicans.
In light of the shootings, the health care debate will be closely watched to see if lawmakers show new restraint after calls from President Obama and many others to bring a more civil tone to political discourse. In his statement, Mr. Dayspring said, “It is our expectation that the debate will continue to focus on those substantive policy differences surrounding the new law.”
Right. Such as how Obama wants to murder all of your family and, more importantly, probably even your precious pets, with socialism. This is not going to be civil.
Democrats will probably even try to defend their health care legislation.
The House of Representatives had planned to vote on the repeal last week, but after Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was
critically wounded in an assassination attempt, the House called off all business to pay its respects. Debate is now scheduled to begin Tuesday with a vote likely Wednesday.
"Americans have legitimate concerns about the cost of the new health care law and its effect on the ability to grow jobs in our country," said Laena Fallon, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's spokeswoman.
When the vote to repeal the law does take place, congressional watchers said, it will likely pass in the Republican-controlled House, and then not even be brought up in the Senate, where Democrats hold the majority. Meanwhile, both sides are making plans for what comes next.
"The Republicans see this as a window of opportunity," said Drew Altman, president of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, referring to midterm election results and polls that show Americans' unhappiness with the law. "The Democrats will try to shift it on its head to talk about popular benefits."
Thomas Scully, who was administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President George W. Bush, said he expects Republicans to present funding challenges and attempt to delay key pieces, using potential costs as a driving force.
Republicans, including House Speaker John Boehner, say the law will cost "billions," while the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says repealing the law would increase the deficit by $230 billion from 2012 to 2021.
Scully said Republicans and moderate Democrats could try to delay a provision, which is supposed to take effect in January 2014, that extends Medicaid to everyone who falls below 133% of the poverty level — or about $14,000 a year for a family of four — until the states can afford it. The federal government will fund the first three years of coverage.
Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, sees other options. "There are lots of things short of an all-out repeal that could throw sand in the gears to slow it down and possibly bring it to a screeching halt," he said. That might include votes on individual mandates and investigations into how the bill is being implemented and how it was passed.
Democrats are using the repeal effort as an opportunity to sell the law and educate people about the benefits that are already in place. Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., spoke with Doctors for America during a Jan. 6 news conference about why the law is necessary. "Our job right now is to play defense," he said.
Amherst County Democrats
U.S. split on health care law repeal
Americans are closely divided over whether the new Republican-controlled House should vote to repeal the health care law that was enacted just last year, a Gallup Poll finds.
But partisans on both sides are united: Republicans solidly back repeal, and Democrats overwhelming want to let the law stand.
The survey results help explain why Republican leaders are determined to forge ahead with repeal — House Speaker John
Boehner has scheduled a vote for Wednesday — even though the effort is virtually guaranteed to fail in the Senate.
The findings, which show independents almost evenly split, also highlight an opportunity for Democrats to renew efforts to make the case for President Obama's signature legislative achievement.
Forty-six percent of those surveyed Tuesday and Wednesday say they want their representative to vote for repeal; 40% want the law to stand.
Nearly eight of 10 Republicans support repeal. In contrast, about two-thirds of Democrats want the law to stay in effect.
Independents are inclined to support repeal, but by a margin too small to be statistically significant.
Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, calls the repeal effort "dramatic political signaling" by Republicans that they plan to use the health care issue to keep Tea Party supporters satisfied and their political base united.
The more significant battles will come later, he says. The repeal vote is likely to be followed by months of efforts to chip away some provisions of the law and to deny other provisions the federal funding they need to be implemented.
Republican sponsors say the law will cost the country billions, and they have named their bill the "Repeal The Job-Killing Health Care Law Act."
However, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office on Thursday concluded that repealing the law would increase the national debt by about $230 billion from 2012 to 2021.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor questioned the CBO report. Budget office accountants, though non-partisan, "are only able to score the bill that was put in front of them," he said in a statement.
He said Democrats had used tax increases, "gimmicks that double count savings," and Medicare cuts to fund the law. Democrats call the repeal vote a "stunt."
"The Republican effort to repeal the health reform law will not pass, and it is little more than a stunt to score points with their base," says Regan Lachapelle, spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
The White House and congressional Democrats are launching a full-court press of speeches, events and press releases to spotlight popular parts of the law that already have gone into effect, such as provisions that allow young adults to stay on their parents' health insurance plans to age 26.
Three members of Obama's Cabinet sent a letter to Congress warning that repealing the law would exacerbate the problems that prompted the law in the first place, including higher premiums for consumers and less competition among insurers.
In the poll, a majority of men endorse repeal while women are inclined to want the law to stand.
One of the most dramatic divides is by age. By 50%-30%, young adults under 30 support the law. But their middle-aged parents, those 50-64 years old, favor repeal by an almost equally wide margin.
The poll of 1,025 adults has a margin of error of +/–4 percentage points.
ACV Democratic News
Update on Vote To Kill Health Care
The Republican-led House of Representatives voted Wednesday to repeal the 10-month-old health reform law, a symbolic rebuke of President Obama's signature legislative accomplishment.
Each of the chamber's 242 Republicans voted to support the bill; all but three Democrats voted against it.
The move fulfilled a pledge Republicans made to voters in the 2010 campaign for a swift vote to undo what they called the "job-killing" measure.
Republicans in the House didn't need help from Democrats to repeal the health care reform law but they got a little anyway. Three Democrats voted against their party in the mostly symbolic vote. Who are these three Democrats who can't support their party on a symbolic vote.
Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina and Mike Ross of Arkansas
All three are members of the Blue Dog coalition, a group of moderate Democrats from conservative districts, republicans pretending to be democrats. Returning these gentlemen to the public sector at the earliest possible moment is the mission.
They were among 39 Democrats who voted against their party nearly a year ago when it first passed the historic health care overhaul. Of the 30 Democrats who voted no and ran for re-election, there were only 13 who were re-elected.
So you see we got something out of the mid terms to be thankfull for also. Only 13 of the original 39 remain. 9 stepped aside and didn't run and 17 that did run got defeated. Having useless do nothings in the caucus serves no purpose unless their numbers push you into a position to control the house. When you are in the minority these people are just dead weight that serve no purpose.
ACV Democratic News
Early Signs of Alzheimer's
Amherst Virginia Democratic News
In an interview with "20/20", Ron Reagan, the son of President Ronald Reagan, said that when his father was in office, no one thought he had Alzheimer's disease -- the devastating illness he was diagnosed with less than two years after leaving the White House.
But Ron Reagan said that he did notice something had changed about his father during his presidency. The father and son often had spirited, fast-paced political debates when Ron visited the president at the White House. But during one such debate, Ron Reagan grew concerned.
"There was just something that was off. I couldn't quite put my finger on it," he told "20/20's" Elizabeth Vargas.
Ron Reagan grew worried enough to spend a day at the White House shadowing the president. That was when he noticed something else -- his father was reading note cards as he made phone calls. It wasn't an obvious sign that something was wrong, but it bothered Ron Reagan nonetheless.
"It wasn't like oh my God he doesn't remember he's President...You know, it was just -- I had an inkling something was going on," he said.
In hindsight, Ron Reagan believes what he say were early signs of Alzheimer's. But Reagan is adamant that his father's illness shouldn't mar his legacy.
"This no more discredits or defines his presidency than Lincoln's chronic depression, Roosevelt's polio, Kennedy's Addison Disease any of those things," he said. "You can't define their presidencies in terms of that."
To mark the hundredth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan's birth, son Ron Reagan has written "My Father at 100: A Memoir."
Michael Reagan blasted as "falsehoods and lies and conspiracy theories to sell books," the suggestion by half-brother Ron Reagan that their father may have had Alzheimer's disease while still in the White House.
"In order for that that happen, you would have to have doctors, the Secret Service and other family members all part of the same conspiracy," he told Politics Daily. Reagan's diagnosis of Alzheimer's was not announced publicly until 1994, five years after he left office.
Michael ripped the excerpt from Ron's book, "My Father at 100," that appears in Sunday's Parade magazine. Ron Jr. cites a 1989 post-presidential visit to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota after a riding accident. "Surgeons opening his skull to relieve pressure on the brain emerged from the operating room with the news that they had detected probable signs of Alzheimer's disease. Further tests conducted the following year confirmed those suspicions."
Ron dates his suspicions about the disease to the 1984 re-election campaign. "I felt the first shivers of concern that something beyond mellowing was affecting my father" during the first debate against Democratic nominee Walter Mondale. "My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses. He looked tired and bewildered." Ron Jr. also notes that by 1986 his father couldn't remember the names of familiar canyons when flying over California, adding that doctors now know the disease can go unrecognized for some time. "The question, then, of whether my father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer's while in office more or less answers itself," he writes.
"Nobody was happy with the debate," Michael told me by phone from Miami. But Ron's suggestion of early onset of the disease "is the last thing I would have expected from him, to take this kind of shot at his Dad with no evidence except he watched a debate between Dad and Mondale."
The semi-siblings who haven't spoken in years, are political and religious opposites. Michael Reagan, 65, is a conservative former radio talk show host who was adopted by Reagan and his first wife, actress Jane Wyman. He sired the Gipper's only two grandchildren with longtime wife, Colleen, and is a regular churchgoer.
Ron, 52, the natural son of Reagan and his second wife, actress and former first lady Nancy Davis Reagan, is a liberal former talk show host on the defunct left-ish Air America network. He is also a self-professed atheist.
Michael, who hopes to become a GOP political consultant, told me that as the author of a half dozen books, "I know publishers want to have that 'ah-ha' moment, something to put out to promote the book. But to go to this extent to just tell falsehoods and lies and conspiracy theories to get it out there, is outrageous. Really, to do this to his mother at 89 and as fragile as she can be, Ron and Patti (Davis) are the only two children she's got, and for him to do this just to sell a book, I mean it's just unconscionable. There are enough great stories he could share that would make news, great 'inside baseball' stories."
U.S. News & World Report reported Friday that although Ron, "who became a liberal and atheist, disappointing his dad" writes about presidential brain surgery in San Diego, "there is no reporting about any San Diego operation on Reagan. News reports at the time of his fall say Reagan was flown to a hospital in Arizona, where he was treated for scrapes and bruises and released after five hours." The U.S. News blog Washington Whispers, which first reported the Ron Reagan story, also notes that the president's four White House doctors said they saw no evidence Reagan had Alzheimer's while in office.
"Basically Ron has my dad looking like the Congresswoman in Arizona, with his head shaved and half his brain exposed,"
Michael Reagan told me. He was referring to Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head during last Saturday's Tucson massacre. "I saw my father on and off and I never saw anything that looked like that. Certainly he would have shared that story."
Michael readily admits he is estranged from both Ron and half-sister Patti Davis, whose liberal views also caused her parents grief over the years. In 2005 she wrote "The Long Goodbye," a loving, first-person account of her father's decline into dementia that starts in 1995, six years after he left Washington.
Michael says he hasn't spoken to Ron since the reading their father's will after his death in 2004. While he refused to discuss inheritance details, he says, "it wasn't enough for Ron or for anybody to retire on...I hope Patti doesn't come out and try to support Ron. He needs to own this deal because it's a conspiracy theory that everybody has to be involved in, including my father's own children."
On Friday, the Ronald Reagan Foundation and Library in Simi Valley, Cal., issued a statement calling Ron's book "wonderfully warm and engaging." But, "as for the topic of Alzheimer's, this subject has been well documented over the years by both President Reagan's personal physicians, physicians who treated him after the diagnosis, as well as those who worked closely with him daily. All are consistent in their view that signs of Alzheimer's did not appear until well after President Reagan left the White House."
Ron Reagan's national publicity tour kicks into high gear next week, culminating with his father's 100th birthday Feb. 6.
Michael is also taking advantage of his father's centennial with a book of his own, "The New Reagan Revolution."
ACVDN Bottom Line
The theory of medecine and the reason for regular medical checkups is that diseases may start years before they become a problem and our doctor may catch an early warning signal and lessen the effects. It isn't possible to pin point the day alzheimers began to show effects on President Ronald Reagan. Perhaps his family members who interacted with him more than even his doctors can make the best guess. The dialog now taking place between Ron and Michael Reagan says more about them than it does their dad. Michael seems to be the driving force behind this madness and unless it is publicity he seeking, handle it privately.
Here are the top six Bills before Congress per public interest. These are the ones the people are watching.
ACV Democratic News
Here are the top six Bills before Congress per public interest. These are the ones the people are watching.
ACV Democratic News
Republicans pretended trickle own economics worked. They pretended they were the party of fiscal responsibility. They pretended Iraq attacked us on 9-11. They pretended there were weapons of mass destruction. They pretended social security was bankrupt. Now they pretend to repeal health care. They will pretend to do whatever their membership wants them to pretend to do. They will even pretend to pretend to care.
ReplyDeleteWhy would a poliical party repeal a health care bill and offer nothing to replace it with? Senior citizens have already started getting help with the so called dougnot hole on their prescription drugs. Does this mean the republicans will chase down seniors and demand the money back? Insurance policies have been written on people not previously elgible due to pre existing conditions and children have gotten to stay on their parents insurance who prior to this law would have been cast off. Will republicans track down each of these situations and take back whatever benefit the citizens got? This is a dammed mess and the republicans caused it. Republicans could have helped write the original bill but made the decision to obstruct and roadblock everything. Republicans are whiney little children who misbehave when they can't get their way. Voters should be smart enough to correct this problem and dumping Bob Goodlatte would be a perfect start.
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